This version was released a couple of weeks ago and instead of the usual “day of” post I decided to wait a little while to see what feedback would come from the theme’s users. The changelog itself (see below) was quite extensive but these are two of the highlights of this release:

New Typography

New Mobile Menu support

Have you tried these out? Does the content look better than what it did before?

This release will most likely represent the feature freeze for this development cycle.

Please feel free to download it from GitHub you will find a link at the bottom of the release post here.

If there is a compelling reason to add a new feature to the theme I will be more than happy to consider it but at this time I feel the release is ready to enter into beta testing.

I would be very happy to discuss any constructive criticisms and/or suggestions on how to improve any of the code base. Obviously appropriate credit will be given as well. Feel free to leave a comment below; or, make a pull request at the theme’s GitHub repository.

Also to note, this release will also be providing some additional functionality required for an upcoming Child-Theme of Opus Primus, keep an eye on this site for more details coming soon …

Although the theme is for the most part very responsive as far as web design goes, it really was lacking in the menu displays. This has been something that has been bothering me for a while and I finally carved out some time to sort out the issue.

I must apologize for not doing this sooner as it took slightly less than an hour to track down a JavaScript plugin that could be integrated into the theme; write the necessary code for the integration; and, add a couple of minor tweaks to make it fit better (there are probably more tweaks to be made).

I added an article to my Instapaper reading list a while back that dealt with typography. It was an interesting insight by Mike Anderson on why he chose to use large font-sizes on his web site. The ideas he wrote about stuck with me. (Thanks, Mike!) Reading the article and following Mike’s links lead to an interesting article from Chris Pearson and his Golden Ratio Typography Calculator (just in case you don’t read all the way to the bottom of the page like I did … thanks, Chris!).

I think I have read these articles three or four times and made notes on how I wanted to apply them to Opus Primus. I should have done this much earlier now that I see the results. The site just looks that much better (with the current 1.3-alpha) than what it did in the past … it even looks great in mobile testing, too.

Most of the front-facing aspects of this new look are done although I’m sure I’ll find something to tweak … I always do.

If you have any ideas or suggestions feel free to share them in the comments below; constructive criticism is always welcome.

This release is a bit ahead of my usual schedule for theme updates (about two months rather than my normal three months) due to the number and extent of the updates, modifications, and corrections. They were starting to become more than what I would normally add (see the changelog below) in a “minor” update. This release may have been better served as version 1.3 but as it is already approved by the WordPress Theme Review Team I will leave the current version as is.

Although most of the work is still under the page, there are a couple of highlights to look at which are more obvious: a new pagination method (see the bottom of any list view page), and adjustments to the Opus Primus TagLines parameters to make it more easily seen (once it is activated in the editor “Screen Options” in the top right corner of your screen).

= Miscellaneous =
* Updated `hooks-filter.txt` documentation to note eight (8) new filters
* Updated `hooks-actions.txt` documentation to note two (2) new actions
* Updated `screenshot.png` to show a bit more of the theme display

I am planning some potentially significant visual changes for the next release (version 1.3?) and as always I welcome any constructive criticisms so feel free to share in the comments below … and don’t be afraid to offer any Feature Request suggestions, I would be more than happy to review them, too.

Like this:

Coming up in the next release of Opus Primus will be a much better implementation of pagination to move between list of posts. If you would like to get the feature now, please feel free to grab the latest release from the Opus Primus GitHub repository.

To get a sneak peek at what this will look like just scroll down to the bottom of the list of posts on the home page. Previous versions of the theme would have had a much more simpler navigation method just using text links of “Previous Page” and “Next Page”.

If you want to revert back to the plain text links of previous versions this is actually fairly easy to do. I would suggest starting with creating a Child-Theme so any changes you make to the theme will be update safe. I wrote an article a while back that may be helpful if you have not created a Child-Theme before. You can find it at WPFirstAid.com.

All you have to do is copy and paste the following line of code into your Child-Theme’s functions.php file:

This was another release with a lot of little things as well as some improvements under the page. Please see the changelog below for more details:

To see the changelog click here.To hide the changelog click here.

== Version 1.2.4 ==
* Released May 2014

= Code =
* Added sanity check to only display comments_link when not in single view or in an archive view
* Added Featured Image Thumbnails to post-format single and archive view templates (except Post-Formats: Image and Gallery)
* Added `opus_primus_theme_version()` call as an accessible text string
* Added new default `number_of_secondary_images` method under Gallery parameters
* Bring the Featured Image Thumbnail back into the index view … can you say “waffle”?
* Change `$output = null` to `$output = ”` in `OpusPrimusPosts::sticky_flag` method
* Corrected typo in `’opus_links_pages_after’` hook
* Corrected modified date/time output to account for scheduled posts being modified earlier than they are posted
* Refactored conditional comments and featured thumbnail checks into the `comments_link` and `show_featured_thumbnail` methods
* Removed `extract` function, escaped attributes, and refactored conditional checks in PullQuotes Stanza
* Use `opus_primus_theme_version` in place of `wp_get_theme` calls
* Use transients to improve performance impact of the `OpusPrimusStructures::copyright` method

Again, this is mostly a release dealing with minor details and minimal to no functionality changes (ideas are welcome, feel free to add yours in the comments below).

I expect to have this latest version pushed to the WordPress Theme repository shortly, perhaps as soon as a couple of days but at most it should be within the week … unless I get any reports back of something significant in this latest version that needs to be addressed immediately. As it is, I will be deploying this beta version to this site as well as my personal site and to WPFirstAid.com. Feel free to have a look around on those sites to see the theme live.